I live well below the poverty line, so I live in a cheap, slummy apartment building where everybody else is poor, too. For the most part, I like this setup. I grew up in poverty, and I’m not comfortable around moneyed people. (It’s a topic for another day but people with money are really weird about, well, money. You can’t even talk about it around them.) But it definitely has its drawbacks. My neighbours and I are always running out of food and meds.
One of the many things I like about poor people’s culture, though, is that we tend to be really good at sharing resources. It makes sense: when you’re short on money, you need to have strong relationships to get by. Of course I’m going to give you what you need if I have it–I’m definitely going to need something you have in the very near future. Besides, when we’re all in the same boat, none of us is likely to believe that the reason I can eat today, and you can’t, is that I deserve it more than you, but next week when you can eat, and I can’t, it’s because you worked harder than me. Most of us are well aware that we’re going to stay poor, no matter how hard we work.
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New Congresswoman Will Pay Her Interns $15 An Hour. Is That A Big Deal?
When Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez takes office next month, representing New York’s 14th District, she will be a part of the “blue wave” of new Democrats in the House. But the 29-year-old may end up being a part of a different kind of wave, too: a bipartisan effort for members of Congress to pay the interns they employ.
“Time to walk the walk,” she tweeted on Tuesday. “Very few members of Congress actually pay their interns. We will be one of them.” And she pledged more than just a stipend: Her interns will make $15 an hour.
Last year, two former unpaid House interns, Carlos Mark Vera and Guillermo Creamer, founded an organization called Pay Our Interns. They collected data about who pays what on Capitol Hill, and they found that about 90 percent of House offices don’t pay their interns at all — a figure that Creamer called “abysmal.”
The numbers are a bit better on the Senate side: Half of Senate Democrats pay their interns at least a stipend, while 55 percent of Senate Republicans do.
As for the $15 hourly wage, only three members of Congress currently pay their interns so well, Creamer tells NPR: Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., Doug Jones, D-Ala., and Rep. Adam Smith, a Democrat from Washington state.
In the for-profit world, the Department of Labor’s rules on paying interns have been clarified in recent years to state that that an intern must be the “primary beneficiary” of the internship, rather than the company. If the company is the primary beneficiary, then that intern is really an employee, and employees are entitled to minimum wage and overtime.
But those laws exempt internships at nonprofits and in the public sector. Thus congressional offices are not obligated to pay interns, and often, they don’t.
New Congresswoman Will Pay Her Interns $15 An Hour. Is That A Big Deal?
Michelle Obama: “I have been at every powerful table you can think of… They are not that smart”
“I have been at probably every powerful table that you can think of, I have worked at nonprofits, I have been at foundations, I have worked in corporations, served on corporate boards, I have been at G-summits, I have sat in at the U.N.: They are not that smart.”I’ve only had one boss who was smarter than me and she was an Afro-Latina. The overwhelming mediocrity of all the white men I’ve had above me telling me what to do actually makes me itch.
water is wet michelle, thanks for confirming though 👏🏽🤝🏽
Michelle Obama: “I have been at every powerful table you can think of… They are not that smart”
When Tumblr bans porn, who loses?
A former staff engineer, who recently left Tumblr and asked to remain
anonymous for professional reasons, tells Vox that the NSFW ban was “in
the works for about six months as an official project,” adding that it
was given additional resources and named “Project X” in September,
shortly before it was announced to the rest of the company at an
all-hands meeting. “[The NSFW ban] was going to happen anyway,” the
former engineer told me. “Verizon pushed it out the door after the child
pornography thing and made the deadline sooner,” but the real problem
was always that Verizon couldn’t sell ads next to porn.Porn on Tumblr is something Verizon needs to wipe out if it’s going to
make any money off what it thinks is actually valuable about the
platform — enormous fandom and social justice communities that, just
before the Verizon acquisition, Khalaf was insisting the staff figure
out how to better monetize.On that note-
Two former Tumblr employees said they were alarmed when Khalaf chose
Black Lives Matter as an example of a community that the company should
focus on converting into Yahoo media consumers. One told The Verge,
“Simon explicitly said that Black Lives Matter was an opportunity to
[make] a ton of money.”Capitalism is disgusting and ruins everything.
We all need to leave this hellsite
Like leaving aside the evils of capitalism etc etc these people are idiots and bad at being capitalists in the first place like??? they have no idea these audiences they want to monetize can smell the inauthenticity immediately like … You’re not gonna monetize the socialists, Tumblr, either let it go or figure out a way to monetize charity and generosity I guess ALSO you want money, sex workers need money … please seek your own level and direct your efforts to monetizing something that is actually monetizable helloooooooooo ROBBER BARONS WOULD BE ASHAMED OF YOU you’re not even diabolical, just greedy stupid and mean 🙄🙄
Bad sex award 2018: the contenders in quotes
Three Women Have Now Accused Neil deGrasse Tyson of Sexual Misconduct
Rebloggin because, I did hear about the first accusation ages ago, which left me unsure but still troubled, but given what I know about this sort of thing and how serial perpetrators work, these allegations are probably true.
Because usually it’s a few men causing many incidents of this sort over a long period of time, and this fits the pattern, and there will probably be more reports in the future. And behavior like that is a disgusting betrayal of trust that ought to be seen for how it is…
Three Women Have Now Accused Neil deGrasse Tyson of Sexual Misconduct
How to Wean Yourself Off Amazon This Holiday Shopping Season
Thirteen-year-old activist with autism wants to close seclusion rooms at schools
Nov. 23, 2018
POWHATAN, Virginia — Alex Campbell was just 7 years old when, he says, his principal dragged him down the hall to the school’s “crisis room.”
Administrators reserved the room, a converted storage closet, for children who acted out. He still remembers the black-painted walls. The small window he was too short to reach. The sound of a desk scraping across the floor, as it was pushed in front of the door to make sure he couldn’t get out.
Alex, who has autism spectrum disorder, says he was taken there more than a half-dozen times in first grade, for behavior such as ripping up paper or refusing to follow instructions in class. The room was supposed to calm him down. Instead, it terrified him.
“When I asked for help or asked if anyone was still there, nobody would answer,” Alex said. “I felt alone. I felt scared.”
According to the latest data collected by the U.S. Department of Education, public school districts reported restraining or secluding over 120,000 students during the 2015-2016 school year, most of them children with disabilities. Families and advocates have documented cases of students being pinned down, strapped to their wheelchairs, handcuffed or restrained in other ways. Both practices, experts say, can traumatize children, and may lead to severe injuries, even death.
Alex is determined to close the seclusion rooms for good. Last week, the 13-year-old told his story to legislators, congressional staff and advocates to mark the introduction of the Keeping All Students Safe Act, a bill that would bar the use of seclusion and significantly curtail the use of restraints in schools that receive federal funds. No federal law currently regulates the use of such practices on students.
“We believe schools should have a safe environment for students to learn and grow,” said Rep. Bobby Scott of Virginia’s 3rd Congressional District. Scott sponsored the legislation with fellow Democrat Rep. Don Beyer of Virginia’s 8th District.
“It’s a civil rights issue,” added Scott, who serves as the ranking member of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce. “Children should not be subjected to practices that are counterproductive, endangering their safety or health.”
Alex tried to keep the “crisis room” a secret.
No laws required school administrators to tell his parents what was happening. Alex says the principal warned him that if he said anything, he would spend the rest of the year locked in the room.
But Alex’s parents said they could tell something was wrong. They noticed unexplained bruises on his knees. He became increasingly anxious. His father Sean Campbell, who works as a data specialist in a public school system, thought it was especially strange when Alex visited the school where he worked and asked where the children got “locked up.” He stopped wanting to go to sleep.
“That’s when it hit me,” Campbell, Alex’s father, said. “He doesn’t want to wake up because he doesn’t want to go to school.”
Eventually, Alex broke.
“He started babbling like crazy,” Campbell said. “‘I can’t go back to that room. I can’t go back.’”
The idea of the school not notifying them appalled Alex’s mother, Kelly Campbell, who has taught in public schools for 11 years. “If a child falls on the playground and bumps their head, I’m obligated to call the parents,” she said. “I’ve been told that in every school I’ve worked with. Something like that could happen to Alex, and nobody has to know about it? Like it’s some dark secret?”
While a landmark piece of federal legislation called the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act, or IDEA, mandates that all students with disabilities are provided with a free public education tailored to meet their needs, regulations governing the use of restraint and seclusion in schools vary from state to state. Many states don’t require school administrators to notify parents when their child is restrained or secluded. According to a recent analysis published by the Autism National Committee, only 28 states provide “meaningful protections against restraint and seclusion” for children, including those with disabilities.
Thirteen-year-old activist with autism wants to close seclusion rooms at schools
4,000yo megalithic tomb defaced with ‘deathly’ Harry Potter symbol (PHOTO)
‘Sherlock North’ & Sky-Backed ‘Bullets’ Help Finnish Weird Go Global – Mipcom
Finally, two of Finland’s greatest international hopes are in their early stages. Sherlock North is based on Arthur Conan Doyle’s 1903 short story The Adventures of the Empty House, which sees the British detective travel to the Nordic region after faking his own death at the Reichenbach Falls. Using the fake identity of Sigerson and on the run from Professor Moriarty, Sherlock Holmes finds himself solving crimes in northern Finland. Juha Wuolijoki, who runs Helsinki and U.S. based Snapper Films, is producing and he tells Deadline that he is working it up as a 10-part series with the co-operation of the Arthur Conan Doyle Estate. “We are very excited that there is a huge interest for Sherlock North and overall Nordic crime drama in the international market place, especially if the projects come with the IP,” he said.
‘Sherlock North’ & Sky-Backed ‘Bullets’ Help Finnish Weird Go Global – Mipcom
bongdanceking 